Babylonian Exile

I just realized that it's Wednesday already, and I have yet to tell you about last weekend's grand adventure, which we now refer to as the "Babylonian Exile."

On Saturday, we decided to spend the day relaxing at the beach. Given that we haven't been out of the city much this summer, I was very excited by the prospect of spending the day hanging out on a Long Island beach. I conducted thorough internet research to select the beach that was least likely to be crowded and most likely to be clean and pleasant. After polling a few of our friends from church, we settled on Robert Moses State Park, located just outside of Babylon, New York. The journey sounded simple enough: a 1.5 hour train ride from Penn Station and then a 15 minute bus ride from Babylon station.

We left Penn Station at about 11 am. We had no idea what was in store for us... After arriving in Babylon, we discovered that the prior bus to the beach had not showed up. Hordes of people were waiting in line. We ended up waiting an hour before the bus finally showed up. When the bus arrived, everyone rushed forward, trying to squeeze on the bus. John almost didn't make it, but then I told the bus driver that he was my fiance. I tell you, the "F" word ("fiance") works like magic! There we were, squeezed shoulder to shoulder with complete strangers... As we pulled out of the parking lot, the bus driver announced that it would take us about an hour to make it to the beach.

We were dumbfounded... How could it take one hour to travel six miles? As we got on the freeway, it quickly became clear that it would be faster to crawl to the beach! I tried to block out the very hairy armpit that kept bumping into my face. (Gross!) Sure enough, the roads were completely congested with beach-goers. After an hour of crawling in traffic, we finally arrived at the beach at 2:30pm.

The beach was just lovely! We rented an umbrella and found a very quiet spot on the beach. We read and watched the waves crashing onto the shore. It was a pleasant afternoon.

After about two hours, we decided to catch the bus back... that's when the real trouble started...

Traffic was entirely backed up and we noticed that the police had closed the bridge and were only letting traffic go off the island. The bus couldn't even make it over.

While we waited, we were enormously entertained by the rantings and ravings of the cars shown in the picture above. The police even showed up at one point to try to calm down some very exuberant teenagers. After waiting another two hours, the police finally opened the bridge up to traffic. We made it on the bus and caught the next train back to the city.

All in all, we spent eight hours traveling to enjoy two hours at the beach. Was it worth it? Yes. Will we ever go to the beach in August on a Saturday? NEVER!